


there are worst fates

by Princex_N



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Chronic Pain, Coping, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Meteorstuck, Walking Canes, coming to terms with things, internalized ableism, joint pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 11:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16722198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: You can't remember when the pain first started, but sometimes you think maybe you've always been like this.Dave has chronic pain, he's still coming to terms with it.





	there are worst fates

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to the anon who suggested this concept to me!

You can't remember when the pain first started, but sometimes you think maybe you've always been like this. 

You're sure that it started with something. The first time he grabbed you and broke your arm, the first time he threw you down the stairs and left you there, the first time he put a sword in your hand and told you that he was done holding back. There had to have been something, you're sure of it. 

It's just that there has always been so much of it that you're not sure what it could possibly have been. 

Noticing that your brother didn't treat you the same way that other kids' parents treated them had been easy. Child's play. You'd only had to go to a public park once to hear a mother fret kindly over her son and realize that things were different for you. 

It wasn't until you'd gotten to middle school that you'd realized that the way you felt things in your own body was different too. 

That interaction is still burned into your brain, even now. A cataclysmic shift in perspective that you can't let go. 

You'd been in line at the cafeteria for the free breakfast program that your school offered, and your hip had been acting up. (You remember what had happened with that one; a desperate attempt at a dodging maneuver gone bad that had dislocated the joint. Your brother had left you like that for two hours before coming back up to pop it back into place. Despite your frantic googling for some way to make it better, it never really got fixed.) You'd been limping. One of the women behind the counter had noticed. 

"Play a little too rough yesterday?" she had asked, voice teasing enough that you hadn't immediately started looking for an out. 

You had shrugged, more focused on choosing a pack of dry cereal that would stave you over until lunch. "Nah, it's just one of the regular pains. You know how it is." 

"I... don't actually," she'd said. "A 'regular pain'?" 

That had been enough to make you look up, and that's when you'd noticed the look of concern on her face. (Bro never made facial expressions, so you'd never been good with them, but that was one that he'd made sure you'd known. That way you'd know who to avoid and who to be better around, to keep someone from noticing.) Panic had flared in your chest and you'd laughed her off, made a weak joke about Basketball (you had been pretty sure that it was a contact sport, and seemed like a safe bet for the season), and hurried down the line and out of the cafeteria. 

The anxiety of having given something away without realizing it had kept you out of the breakfast line until you were in high school, hunger be damned. 

You'd been more careful after that. You watched other people more intently and noticed that  _no_ , not everybody flinches in pain when they straighten their arms too quickly.  _No_ , not everybody has to sit in specific ways to keep their hips ad back from hurting for hours afterwards.  _No_ , not everybody has to flex their fingers a handful of times to work back in enough flexibility to pick something up.

You told yourself that it was fine. It was just another way that you were different, just another drop in the bucket, and that was  _fine_ because the differences were what kept you better than everyone else. Your brother did the things he did for a  _reason_ , and he knew what he was doing. You weren't really hurt that bad, you were just a bitch who couldn't take the heat. 

So, you muscled your way through the pain like a cool kid. You learned how to avoid putting too much pressure on your joints without it being obvious how much pain you were in. You learned how to stretch to keep your muscles from stiffening up and making the pain worse. You taught yourself how to keep a blank face and a closed mouth no matter how bad it got. 

You learned how to fight without giving your weaknesses away. 

You had thought that you'd finally understood all of the ways that you were different from other people. 

It wasn't until after the game started that you'd realized that there were more. 

The first portion of the game had been you on your own. You had fought the way you always did, because you didn't know there was another way to do it. You hadn't let yourself make allowances for the pain because that wasn't a weakness you could afford, even if no one else was around to see it. 

It wasn't until you'd met up with Rose that you'd realized just how bad things were. 

Rose fights different than you do. At first it had been easy to dismiss that as being because of the differences in your weapons choice, but the longer you'd spent mentally taking notes the more you realized that that wasn't the case. 

She can fight longer than you can. She's not as flexible as you, but she can pull off maneuvers that you'd never be able to dream of accomplishing. Her blows have nearly twice as much strength behind them because the recoil doesn't hurt her like it hurts you. 

Rose is a better fighter than you, and it's because she isn't in pain. 

There's another side of it too, of course. You take hits better than she does, because you're used to taking them. Your injuries are less noticeable and they take you out of commission for a shorter period of time, because you're so used to being in pain that you barely notice the difference. You don't waver in the same ways she does. 

It takes you a long time to realize that these are not good things. 

None of it  _really_ sinks in until after you hit God Tier. You had started putting the pieces together before then, of course you had been, you're not an idiot. You're not so completely blind that you'd miss the obvious clues sitting right in front of you. Even if Rose hadn't been noticing things and confronting you about them too, you would have been able to understand. 

Your brother taught you that. 

But it's not until after you go God Tier and find that you are still in pain that you start to get  _angry_ about it. 

You'll admit to not being entirely sure how the whole God Tier shtick is supposed to work. You know that it's supposed to make you harder to kill, and presumably harder to injure (or maybe just quicker to heal), that it's supposed to make the game easier to win. You know that you had definitely died in an explosion - it's likely that there wouldn't have been much of you left to heal. Theoretically, this means that this body should be mostly - if not entirely - brand fucking new. 

The pain has not gone anywhere. 

Here is what you finally know: your brother wasn't training you, he was breaking you.

You're fifteen years old and your joints creak and pop like an old man's. The pain that radiates out from your bones nearly incapacitates you some days. Some mornings, you cannot move your body well enough to find the leverage to get out of bed. 

You cannot sit in bed with your boyfriend for more than fifteen minutes before the pain in your hips and lower back gets so bad that it will linger for hours. 

You are starting to fully understand that this is not normal but that you will be this way for the rest of your life, and you have no idea what to do about that. 

"Have you considered not doing things that hurt you?" Karkat asks one day, laying on your bed and watching you try and work your shoulders into some semblance of functioning. 

You have not gotten any better at dealing with this on your own. 

There is a second option that you have never tried. 

"There isn't really a way that works," you say, voice faux casual but you're pretty sure that Karkat can see straight through you by now. "If I wanted to avoid doing things that hurt me, I'd never be able to do anything. Including nothing." 

You stretch your shoulder out as best as you can and try not to make it obvious that you're practically crawling out of your skin as you wait to see how Karkat will react. 

(This was a bad idea. Your brother was right, you  _are_ just a bitch who can't take the heat. Your pain isn't special, you're just a dramatic piece of shit who should be  _better by now. You -)_

"That doesn't mean there aren't things you can do to make it better," Karkat says, so matter-of-fact that you can't be mad at any perceived condescension or lack of understanding because it really does just sound so obvious when he says it. 

It isn't like you've really tried anything except ignoring it before. 

"Alright," you say. "What do you have in mind?" 

Apparently aches and pains are pretty common in the troll world. You guess that makes sense; based off of what you've heard, trolls get up to some weird violent shit, both for the usual violent reasons and also as some weird kind of flirting. But whatever, you're not one to judge. 

It turns out that there's a lot more to this pain-relief business that you had thought. 

No one is confident enough with any kind of chemistry to try alchemizing pain medication, which is probably for the best because you don't have any experience with it at all and still can't figure out how you feel about it. Instead there are hot water bottles (which Karkat, of course, describes using a fifteen word title with the word "sack" in it that you have no desire to hear repeated), heated blankets, and "physical therapy" (which is really just a fancy term for your regular stretching plus some exercises Rose managed to research from somewhere and massages that Karkat already knew for some reason). 

Surprisingly, it helps. The pain doesn't go away, which  _doesn't_ surprise you, because by this point you can't remember ever _not_ being in pain, and you don't know what you'd do with yourself if it suddenly left. 

It doesn't go away, but it gets better in odd ways. You can sit comfortably for longer, your wrists stop aching so often, your shoulder stops dislocating at odd moments. 

Issues only really start to arise when Rose suggests the cane. 

"It would help," she insists. "You have issues with your knees and hips, and you adjust the way you walk to compensate for it. That makes it worse because of the odd way you're moving your body. The cane would help you keep balance and support you when you walk without straining the other half of your body." 

"Fuck that. I'm not gonna use a  _cane_ ," you snarl, panic turning into anger in your voice. "I'm not some fragile old woman, I walk just fine." 

What you don't say is this: getting a cane would be the last step in admitting that some pieces of you are permanently broken. You'd never used crutches, but you'd see other kids with them; crutches are temporary, a stepping stone in a path to recovery. A cane is something else. Something permanent. An admission to the fact that  _you are not getting better_. 

You aren't positive if you can admit that yet. 

Aren't sure if you'll ever actually be able to. 

Part of you wants to protest, point out how far you've already come in admitting hard truths to yourself. Your brother isn't the pinnacle of cool and didn't have your best interests at heart, your pain isn't a normal thing that everybody goes through, your pain isn't your fault. 

Part of you already knows that it's going to be forever, but most of you is still coming to terms with the fact that you are going to survive that long, and you don't know if you can handle dealing with more than that right now. 

Rose, to her credit, doesn't push the issue. She lets you stomp off (as best as you're able) without protest and doesn't bring it up again. 

Not that it stays out of  _your_ head. Now, every time you adjust your stride to compensate for your hip or your knee, you think about the cane. Each time you hurt your back or shoulders leaning up on something like the wall or a couch, you're thinking about it. When your knee gives out under you and you nearly fall in the hallway, it's the first thing on your mind. 

You can't stand it. 

Still, you do your damnedest to avoid it. Try not to think about it, try to convince yourself that you don't need it, pretend it isn't an oppressive thought you have every time Karkat takes your hand to massage away the stiffness. 

Act like you won't degrade into needing it eventually.

You don't say anything, and no one brings it up, not for a while at least. Not until you try to avoid tripping over an overexcited Mayor in the hallway and can't catch yourself, wind up slamming your knee into the tile hard enough that your vision practically whites out with the pain. 

The Mayor takes off when you yell and comes back with Rose. The two of you decide that you're not injured - not any more than usual at least - but you still need her help to get to the common area. 

"You don't have to use it all the time," she says. She speaks quietly, like you might decide to just not hear if you don't want to listen. "Just when it gets really bad." 

You wait for the automatic protests to leap to the front of your mind, but just wind up feeling hollow when they don't come. 

"Fine," you sigh. At this point it really can't be any worse than needing someone else to take half of your weight because your knee can't. At least it will spare you the indignity of needing someone else to see you when you're like. "I'll try it." 

She leaves you on one of the couches and returns in less than five minutes, cane in hand, because of course she'd been creating the stupid things even after you'd told her no. 

You want it to not help.

At least then you would have a convenient excuse for not using it. 

But as you learn how to use it and as you keep paying attention to the rest of your body, you realize that it does. Your knees and hips come back to some kind of equilibrium, your back gets a little better, you stop stumbling so often when you walk. You're not sure if your wrists and shoulders necessarily appreciate it, but that's surprisingly not enough to convince you to throw it away. 

Even on the days you don't use it, you can still tell that it's been helping. You can fight for loner, your knees no longer straining with overuse. It doesn't hurt as much to work on the floor to build Can Town with the others. You can go longer without having to find some excuse to sit down somewhere. 

Rose doesn't goat per se, but probably only because she knows how it still grates on you to use it. Even if you both know that she was right. 

You get used to the cane. The pain doesn't stop. 

You're really starting to understand that it isn't going to.

You don't know exactly how you feel about it. There's a lot of things you don't know exactly how to feel about. Ultimately, you guess it's just the hand you've been dealt. One shitty card in a deck of the worst the universe had to offer you. 

Just the way things are for you. 

The way they're always going to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> am i using dave to work out my own feelings about the cane i haven't purchased yet, but will probably have to soon?  
> Maybe.  
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)
> 
> Might be another one of these around here soon


End file.
